“How old is Arden Lowe?”
“Yesterday I was twenty, so Arden was younger, naturally. He doesn’t have my kind of talent for being any age I want to be. I guess he’s eleven, and kind of a baby when I’m twenty, but such a good-looking baby.”
She smiled at me, but I knew darn well she couldn’t be more than … than twelve? I went back to my dolls.
“Audrina, you love those dolls more than you do me.”
“No, I don’t …” But I wasn’t really too sure even as I said that.
“Then give me the boy and men dolls.”
“All the boy and men dolls are gone,” I answered in a funny, tight voice that made Vera open her eyes wide.
“Where did all the male dolls go, Audrina?” she whispered in the weirdest kind of knowing voice that made me shiver.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back, somehow afraid. I quickly glanced around with scared eyes. Tinkle-tinkle sounded the chimes above as they dangled perfectly still. I shrank tighter inside. “I thought you took them.”
“You’re a baa… ad girl, Audrina, a really wicked girl. Someday you’ll find out exactly how bad, and when you do, you’ll want to die.” She giggled and drew away.
What was wrong with me that she’d want to hurt me time and again? Or was something wrong with her? Like my mother and her sister … were we going to repeat history over and over?
Vera’s pale, pasty face grinned at me wickedly, seeming to represent all evil. When she turned her head the colors came to play upon her skin and her apricot hair turned red, then blue streaked with violet. “Give me all your dolls, even if the best ones have gone on to hell.” She reached to seize up half a dozen of the closest dolls.
Moving lightning fast, I snatched those dolls from her hands. Then, jumping to my feet, I ran about gathering up all the other dolls. Vera crawled to rake my legs with her long fingernails, always filed to sharp points. Still I managed to hold her off with one foot against her shoulder as I gathered up the last handful of dolls and costumes. With both hands full now, I shoved her with my foot so that she fell backward, and I was off and running down the spiraling stairs at breakneck speed, sure she couldn’t catch me. Yet I heard her right behind me, screaming out my name, ordering me to stop. “If I fall it will be your fault, your fault!” She added a few filthy names, which had no meaning for me at all.
“You don’t love me, Audrina,” I heard her wail. Her hard-soled shoes made clunking noises on the metal stairs. “If you really loved me like a sister, you’d do what I want and give me everything I want to make up for all the pain I have to suffer.” I heard her stop and gasp for breath. “Audrina, don’t you dare hide those dolls! Don’t you dare! They belong to me just as much as they belong to you!”
No, they didn’t. I’d been the one to find them in an old trunk. There was a rule about finders being keepers, and I believed in rules, old adages, maxims. They were tried and tested by time that knew so much more about everything than I did.
It was easy to duck out of sight as Vera tediously, clumsily clumbered down the steep and narrow stairs. Under a loose floorboard I stuffed the dolls and all their colorful Edwardian costumes that took them to many an important social function. That’s when I heard Vera scream.
Oh, golly! She’d fallen again. I ran to where she lay in a crumpled heap. Her left leg was buckled under her in a grotesque way. It was the leg she’d broken twice before. I cringed to see a bit of jagged bone protruding through her torn flesh, which was gushing blood.
“It’s your fault,” she moaned, in so much agony her pretty face was twisted and ugly. “It’s your fault for not giving me what I wanted. Always your fault, everything bad that happens to me, your fault. Somebody should give me what I want sometime.”
“I’ll give you the dolls now,” I said weakly, prepared to give her anything she demanded now that she was hurt. “I’ll run for your mother and mine first—”
“I don’t want your damned dolls now!” she cried. “Just get out and leave me alone! But for you I would have had everything. Someday you’re going to pay for all that you’ve stolen from me, Audrina. I’m supposed to be the first and best, not you!”
It made me feel sick to back off and leave her alone like she was, broken and in pain, that left leg gushing blood. Then I noticed her left arm was lying there in a peculiar position, too. Oh, dear Lord. It had broken again. Now she’d have a broken arm, and a broken leg. But even so, God had not taught Vera anything about humility, as I’d been taught, and taught well …
How did I know that?
Flying down the stairs I bumped into Papa. “Haven’t I told you to stay out of the cupola?” he barked, grabbing hold of my arm and trying to prevent me from reaching my mother. “Don’t go up there until I have that guardrail put back. You could fall and hurt yourself.”
I didn’t want to be the one to tell Papa about Vera’s broken bones. Yet I had to, since he refused to let go of my arm. “She’s up there bleeding, Papa. Great gobs of blood, and if you don’t let go of me and call an ambulance, she might die.”
“I doubt it,” he said; still, he did bellow out to Momma, “Call for the ambulance, Lucky. Vera has broken her bones again. My health insurance will cancel my plan if this keeps up.”
Still, when it came down to the nitty-gritty, Papa was the one who calmed Vera’s fears and sat beside her in the ambulance and held her hand as he wiped away her tears. And on a stretcher, in an ambulance that knew her well, Vera was again on her way to the closest hospital to have yet another cast put on her arm, and on her leg, too.
I stood near the front door and watched the ambulance disappear around the bend of our long drive. Both my mother and my aunt refused to go to the hospital again and suffer through all the long hours of waiting and watching that shriveled leg being again put into a cast. The last time she’d broken her leg, Vera’s doctor said that if she broke it again, the leg might not grow as long as the other.
“Don’t look so worried, darling,” comforted Momma. “It wasn’t your fault. We have warned Vera time and again not to climb those spiraling stairs. That’s why we tell you not to go up there, knowing she’ll follow sooner or later to check on what you’re doing. And doctors always give you the most dire predictions, thinking how grateful you’ll feel when they don’t come true. Vera’s leg will grow to match the other … though God knows how she manages to break the same one over and over again so consistently.”
Aunt Ellsbeth said nothing at all. It seemed her daughter’s broken bones didn’t concern her nearly as much as hunting throughout the house for an old vacuum cleaner, which she finally found in the closet under the back stairs. She headed toward the family dining room, where six presidents hung to stare at the naked lady eating grapes.
“Is there anything I can do to help, Aunt Ellsbeth?” I asked.